


To Be a Ghost

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: A Pocketful of Eezo: Xia Shepard x Tali'Zorah vas Normandy [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mass Effect 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 11:42:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9656039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Shepard tries to focus on the mission after his revival, but Horizon forces him to take a moment to breathe.  It isn't good.





	

There simply hadn’t been enough _time_. **  
**

He’d been running, running ever since Miranda’s voice filtered over an intercom and told him to get up and fight.  It had come at him at dizzying speeds: Cerberus, stolen human colonists, the little fact that he’d been dead for two years and now everyone expected him to act as if nothing had ever happened.

So much had changed.  Shepard couldn’t even name it all.  

The meeting with Tali on Freedom’s Progress had ended before it began.  Her shocked voice, her hands clasping his, a hurried return to her ship with her wounded team and the traumatized Veetor.  Jacob and Miranda had rushed him back to the Kodiak just as quickly, ready to make their report to the Illusive Man.  Shepard had watched the quarians take off, feeling dizzy with their departure.  It had been days since he’d last seen Tali on the SR-1 – no, it had been years.  He’d huddled silent in the corner seat on the Kodiak while Jacob and Miranda talked amongst themselves.  Miranda’s keen eyes watched him closely.

He thought Joker and Dr. Chakwas were the only things keeping him from just… running.  He’d been sorely tempted.  But they kept him anchored, at least enough to get the job done.  He wasn’t sure about the rest.  Wasn’t sure who he was, anymore, when he wasn’t fighting.  They at least reminded him he knew how to do that much.

Omega was filth and grime and red.  He’d first felt like himself again when he saw Garrus, brash and cocky and a damn welcome sight with his sniper rifle slung over one shoulder.  Hell, he’d missed that turian.  

It wasn’t an hour later that Garrus was on the ground, choking on half-clotted blue blood in the back of his throat, fingers trying to curl around his rifle one more time.  Shepard burned through all their medi-gel, plastering it over the terrible wounds on Garrus’ neck and face.  It took three days before he got all the turian blood out from under his nails.  

Garrus tried to laugh it off afterwards, but the blue dotting his bandages made Shepard want to incinerate something.  He’d almost let Omega become another fucking Virmire.  He couldn’t let that happen again.

The ship was starting to populate, people like Jack and Grunt and Zaeed, people Shepard could only trust as far as he could throw them.  Not being a biotic, it wasn’t far.  He thought Mordin at least could be trusted, as long as their goals were the same.  But the calculations in Mordin’s eyes, humming at top speed at all times, were unsettling.  

Shepard mostly kept to himself.  He would have spent more time with Garrus, but Shepard saw the way Garrus seethed, quiet and dangerous.  He’d seen the little names carved on Garrus’ visor when trying to staunch the bleeding on Omega.   

Shepard wasn’t the same, and Garrus wasn’t either.  Neither of them knew what to do about it.

* * *

Shepard ducked out of the communications room, his hands shaking after the call with the Illusive Man.  That bastard had fucking _set up_ Horizon, led the Collectors straight to more humans.  Straight to Kaidan.  

He took the elevator up to his quarters, pacing himself in a box as it rose.  “I didn’t choose this,” he growled into the air.  “Why didn’t he listen –”

“I’m sorry, Commander Shepard,” said EDI.  “Do you require my assistance?”  

“Just trying to vent, EDI,” Shepard bit out.  “Ignore me.”

“I cannot ignore you, as you are the commander of this ship.  However, I will stop responding to you until such time as you specifically request my services,” said EDI brightly.

Shepard waved a hand at the little blue holo that had popped up in the elevator.  It winked out of existence obligingly.  The elevator doors slid open, and he palmed the lock to his quarters.

He didn’t know what he wanted to do.  Restless energy thrummed within him, pounding in his head.  He stood in the entryway, breathing heavily, hands balling into fists.  

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hissed.

If only there had been more time.  If he and Kaidan could have just taken a moment to breathe, maybe the conversation would have gone differently.  Shepard could have explained better what he knew about where he’d been, the past two years.  Maybe Mordin could have gone into the details about the Collectors and their seeker swarms and what they had discovered.  Garrus could have reassured Kaidan, made it clear that the mad scientist bullshit they’d seen in the Traverse wasn’t what Shepard was doing with Cerberus.  

Shepard’s omni-tool flickered.  He waved some music on, throbbing club music that seemed to sync with the rabbity beat of his heart.  He glanced at his terminal, fingertips itching.  He wanted to send a message.  He had no idea what to say.

How could Shepard have been so useless?

How could Kaidan not have _trusted_ him?

Methodically he pulled off his boots, his Cerberus fatigues, his underthings.  He folded the clothing carefully, then put the still-clean fatigues back into the wall-mounted cabinet.  He closed the door, examining it for a moment.  Then he smashed his fist into it.

It was a controlled hit.  He wasn’t that stupid, to punch something hard enough to break his hand; not again.  That kind of temper he’d worked hard to leave behind.  The hit bruised, but it didn’t break.  

Shepard sat down at his terminal, the chair cold against his bare skin.  He didn’t care.  His fingers hovered over the interface as he realized he had no address for anything he might want to say.  He shut the terminal down again, staring at its blank screen, then got up and headed to the bathroom.

He stood in the shower, the water turned up as hot as it could go, breathing as deeply as he could.  His back stung, a wound over his shoulder he hadn’t noticed before.  He winced.  Just another thing to remind him none of this was right.

He said their names as the water trickled over his mouth.  It tasted stale and recycled against his words.

_Kaidan.  Ashley.  Tali.  Garrus.  Liara.  Wrex._

Shepard closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the wall, his hand aching.  The music pulsed behind the sound of the water.  It was frantic, distorted, wrong.  

He wasn’t sure how much time he spent there in the hot shower.  He felt unstuck from time, adrift.  He didn’t even know how old he was now.  What counted, when you’d been dead such a long time?   The part where you were worse than dead?  The parts where they rebuilt you?  He didn’t know.  He suspected nobody did.

He turned the water off and he stood in the steam, flexing his sore fist, gazing at nothing in particular.

So this was what it was to be a ghost.  

Fucking great.

**Author's Note:**

> It ain't Mass Effect 2 without some Shepard existentialism <3


End file.
